


This Thing Suspended

by ConquisteloCait



Category: Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 20:31:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2283612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConquisteloCait/pseuds/ConquisteloCait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Situations are tenuous, and we all have our skills. </p>
<p>(A one-shot taking place in a longer AU where Irisviel is the Einzbern master).</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Thing Suspended

**Author's Note:**

> I needed a break from pilot study proposals, and it’s been a year since I’ve written anything for these two. 
> 
> The problem with writing NSFW stuff for Saber and Irisviel is that it is incredibly hard to think of a scenario for sex that might actually happen. Because it wouldn’t, I think - for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the timing of the war is so limited that they wouldn't be able to move past certain boundaries in that short amount of time. So I am making some assumptions here simply to be able to write these two being together in a way that is decidedly not platonic. Because I want to. 
> 
> Also. This is a one-shot that takes place non-canonically within a larger mental fic universe (that I…super haven’t written yet, because I was stupid enough to sign on for a PhD) where Kiritsugu doesn’t exist, Maiya is the hired gun for the Einzberns, and Irisviel is the functioning Master. It also assumes a vivid history for Saber as Arthur (there is a vague reference in here to a Mists of Avalon-style moment). I'll get on that fic eventually, but for now, I share this.
> 
> Enjoy, and if you are a fan of this (or literally any f/f pairing) come say hi on Tumblr <3

This Thing Suspended

 

            The night was not particularly cold, but it had still seemed like a good idea to wear her winter coat – at the time. Something about the way it buttoned and the hat that kept what little heat she retained closely snuggled around her ears made Irisviel feel safe. It smelled like home, which to be frank was still on the distant side and was mostly made of old fires, steaming tea, wood and banister polish. She had put it on to steel herself for the drive around Fuyuki, looking for Caster. It was going to be unpleasant. It could be dangerous. It-

            It was _hot_. Seated the way she was, arms wrapped around Saber on the back of the motorcycle, there definitely was a drop in temperature from the wind whipping her hair out in tangled strands behind her. By rights she should have been chilly. Her winter hat was stuffed between her legs and the only helmet kept her breath trapped as a fogged cloud right on her cheeks and nose. It was like a personal little sauna that left her flushed, and Saber was radiating heat.

The hot, sick reek coming from the underground sewer had been…indescribable. Overwhelming. Saber had recognized that smell immediately as something other than city refuse, and had insisted that Irisviel stay with the bike. She had insisted right back that Saber was going nowhere that Irisviel couldn’t heal her. At a stalemate, they are stared hard at one another before finally making their way by the light of the little promotional flashlight attached to the bike’s keys.

            Irisviel had a strong stomach. She could handle herself. She had valiantly managed not to get sick. But the sight of what they had found – on the walls, the ceilings, God, the _pillars_ – the smears of it, the piles, the congealed detritus…She hadn’t actively acknowledged that she was crying until tears started to make a damp spot on her shirt collar. When they left, she caught a quick flash of Saber’s face in the light –unreadable, reflective.

            Now Saber was taut and vibrating, the muscles in her biceps permanently hardened by how tightly she was gripping the bike. The pleasant thrum of the engine was replaced by a quiver going straight down Saber’s spine. She was – what, enraged? Guilty, again, that this was another thing she hadn’t stopped? Irisviel couldn’t decide. The wind made it impossible to speak, but Irisviel had a lump in her throat that was made of a thousand putrefied words that wouldn’t come out either way. She needed to breathe.

            Irisviel squeezed her Servant to get her attention, and then pointed towards the exit ramp that led towards the docks. Saber, bless her, immediately understood the message and altered their course for five more silent minutes. She slowed the bike down and pulled over by one of the piers leading out from the city into the bay – not the beach they had walked on only weeks (hours?) before, but it was water, and to Irisviel water was peaceful and rare. The rhythmic guttering of the bike slowed, and after the jingling of Saber’s keys, it was quiet.

            Saber did not dismount the motorcycle. Instead, she sat without acknowledging Irisviel, rigid, inscrutable, and frightening. Irisviel had a sense that this must have been how she’d seemed on the battlefield, why so many armies had fallen to so small a King. She seemed to loom far above them both, untouchable. However, that had never stopped Irisviel.

            She slid a hand slowly up Saber’s back, counting each vertebrae, smoothing her palm over Saber’s shoulder blade. Saber let out a breath – not audibly, but obvious in the way her shoulders sank. She got off the bike and walked towards the nearest pier, staring wordlessly towards the dark water, lit across the bay by the other half of the city’s twinkling lights reflected in reverse. Irisviel followed her, stood beside her. The lapping of the water set a counterpoint to the thrumming of her heart.

            “Saber…what we just saw, it- it was terrible…no, terrible isn’t the right word, there isn’t a right word, but you know it’s not your-”

            “Stop,” Saber commands, and Irisiel obeys. It’s the only command she’s ever been given, besides ‘run.’ Her Servant swallows, seems to drown for words. Irisviel hears them anyway – _It is my fault. I could have been there. If we had left sooner, if we had known sooner, had I not been so distracted –_

She could command her Servant in turn, and Saber might obey, but it seems as if the only thing to do is exactly the thing she does.

            She holds a breath. Swallows it.

            Saber’s face is clammy and soft in her palms and her lips are wet, as if she had been panting and the night had condensed on her mouth. Irisviel holds them still, fitting them together more perfectly, feeling the drumbeat of her heart in her fingertips. She wonders if Saber can feel it in the skin of her cheeks, before Saber makes a muffled noise against Irisviel’s mouth and deepens the kiss.  

            She’s taller than Saber, but it doesn’t feel that way when they press together. Saber has braced her back against the piling and Irisviel compensates, almost shrinking, wanting to feel equal but encapsulated by that radiant heat. It’s different from human contact, and not. Saber feels pliant, tangible, and the hairs on her neck are raised. She brushes the tips of her fingers against them and Saber shivers, breaking the kiss to pull back and level a look at her.

            “Irisviel,” she says.

            “It’s ok…” It’s mostly just cooing, whispers against the shell of Saber’s ear, but it _is_. It is ok. Or rather, things will become ok if she can melt into this thing and forget everything she witnessed tonight. Instinctually, she feels that the same must be true for Saber, and Irisviel is no war general, no tactician. She has only one thing to offer to this war.

            Saber’s green eyes are catlike in the moonlight. She is Saber the Servant still, taut muscle and intensity, and perhaps this is why Irisviel has gotten away with everything so far. If it were just them, just the two of them back at the manor, Saber likely would have protested on principal alone, gentle though she may have been. As it stands, Saber is coiled and on fire – any protests that may have welled up in her gut were quelled by the cool touch of Irisviel’s fingers on her overheated neck. She’s actually sweating for the first time this War.

            Words fail her, and to Irisviel are unnecessary. That doesn’t stop her from making a startled and flabbergasted noise when Irisviel lowers herself to her knees. She really ought to bat away the slender white fingers working at her belt buckle, ought to take them and lift this lady to her feet, kiss them and escort her back to the bike, ought to be a _gentleman –_

The night hadn’t felt cold until the breeze off the water hits her bare thighs. She grits her teeth, flushes, looks down. All she sees is the shimmery curtain of pale hair below her, but she can feel the small gust of hot breath at the junction of her thighs. Saber leans against the wood of the pier, ignoring the few splinters that catch on her jacket. She’s gripping it on either side through the leather of her gloves, uncertain of where else to put her hands, and closes her eyes with a groan at the first hot brush of a tongue through plain cotton fabric.

            Irisviel drags her tongue up the gravel grey all the way to the waistband, just to taste the soft skin of Saber’s belly. It twitches under her, and she giggles. It’s a hedonistically pleasing sensation - the scrape of fabric against her tongue, the dark spot gradually forming, the faint musky taste coming through the lower she goes – and it is truly gratifying to feel the muscles of Saber’s thighs relax and re-tense for a much better reason. She snakes her tongue underneath Saber’s underwear and laps at the damp curls she finds. Saber, perhaps inadvertently, parts her legs. The smell of her is beautiful and primal, something transporting, and in her mind she is thinking _rain on green moss, dense forests, hunting in untouched kingdoms,_ things that are valiantly unclaimed. She rests here, and in the closing of her eyes she sees the tunnel again, the blood and the teeth and the bits of flesh –

            Shakes her head. Green forests. Lakes, and rain. A young blonde in a tunic pointing her first arrow at the sky and blinded by the sun.

            She hooks her thumbs in Saber’s belt loops and pulls.

            The first time she feels Irisviel’s tongue directly on her, probing into her heat and wetness with answering fervor, Saber chokes on her own throat. She coughs and swallows, raising one arm to wrap about the pier as best she can because she is sure her knees are buckling. The other threads itself into the fine silver hair obscuring Irisviel’s face. She watches it, her hand, as it moves of its own accord, half-fingering the threads between her thumb and forefinger like it is valuable and half-pulling her closer with chivalric regret. She’s got her hips thrust forward to meet the damp swirl of Irisviel’s tongue as it paints circles in her center, pushing deeper every time. She is dimly fascinated by the difference in their coloring. The chiaroscuro of black leather and wintery hair, of the slacks caught round her splaying knees and the soft fur of Irisviel’s coat tickling the invisibly fine gold hair on her thighs. _There is something,_ she thinks. _Something to remember. Something to regret. Something that I…I didn’t…I…_ and then plump lips lock and suck on something that makes her bite her cheek and tremble.

            It would be lying to say that she isn’t growing damp as well. Saber has a wonderfully husky voice that is strained and keening – just a little, just quietly. Just enough to hear, as close as she is. She can feel those sounds stabbing straight to her heart and between her legs, little electric shocks in each. She feels for her Servant, for this temporary woman who has seen so much and throws herself into it again and again if she must in her search for absolution and peaceful eternity. It is a nebulous feeling – identifiable by flushes in her cheeks, quickening in her stomach, swift and surprising laughter and a vice grip in her chest whenever Saber goes to battle. It’s not something she could verbalize. Irisviel does not have enough lifetime behind her to describe things appropriately with words, but that doesn’t make them less intense; it just manifests differently. Right now, she is running her palms around Saber’s legs to grip the backs of her thighs, to bury her tongue as deeply as she can into Saber’s heat until her jaw aches and her chin is wet. She is grateful, she is ( _he’s always made her believe)_ comparatively useless. But she can use this alchemical body. She can slide two fingers into Saber and pump them until Saber jerks her hips forward in counterpoint, can suck and soothe and circle and flick the little bundle of nerves, fluttering the tip of her tongue as Saber starts to pant.

            The feeling is unlike anything she has experienced. It is adrenaline and hypnotism and – yes, a spark of fear – unfamiliar and base and beautiful. Saber is no longer in control of her body, and that is – alright – in this moment; acceptable. The things, the beauty, this beautiful, the woman before her ( _fire, people dancing, a woman with dark curtainfall of hair and a calculated smile backcrawling down her body)_ inside her is inside her in more ways than is, strictly, appropriate / she’s a Servant, this is the Holy Grail – mnn – sparks and blanketing and things that were are now not. Her abdominal muscles are constricting, and it is as if a vortex is warping her core, spiraling her body like a screw. And she – and she –

            Saber looks down. Irisviel looks up. Her eyes smile, her tongue flicks out, and her fingers push _in_ and _up –_

No noise escapes her throat as she releases, but her mouth is open and her body is tense –

            and    for a moment       blissful, suspended

            She can’t see a thing.

 

            Saber accepts Irisviel’s help in pulling up her pants, blushing furiously as Irisviel bends to use her skirt to delicately wipe her mouth. She folds herself to the ground next to Irisviel and they sit for a moment in silence, watching the moon scatter and reassemble in the bay. Irisviel does not cuddle up to Saber, Saber does not put an arm around her shoulder. They do link their fingers next to a bottle top and a pair of rusty coins. Irisviel smiles – not at her Servant, but at the water. It is Camelot’s water now, in this moment. This is water transformed, mistrusted by Saber for bringing enemies, storms, uncertainties. Horrors. She tightens her fingers on Saber’s, and feels Arturia squeeze them back.

            Nothing is okay. Not really.

            But she thinks ( _because Saber is almost smiling)_ that at least, right now, it’s quiet.

 

 


End file.
